Richard Brodsky: Cuomo, set example and pay state workers $15 an hour

RICHARD BRODSKY

Published 9:03 pm, Sunday, September 13, 2015

Take Gov. Andrew Cuomo at his word. He wants a $15 minimum wage, for all workers: "If you work full time, you shouldn't have to live in poverty — plain and simple. Raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour will add fairness to our economy and bring dignity and respect to 2.2 million people."

It makes economic sense. The more income in the hands of working people, the more they spend. The more they spend, the more economic activity and new jobs. It's "demand-side economics," the progressive alternative to the failed policies of austerity and "supply-side economics," which put billions in the hands of the 1 percent and did little to create jobs and growth.

Cuomo has a fight on his hands. Republicans, including his allies in the state Senate, are not with the program. His old adversaries, the Working Families Party and lots of unions and progressive voters, are pleased but wary. He needs to make this happen.

Did you know that Cuomo funds programs that pay tens of thousands of workers less than $9 an hour? And that these folks care for the disabled, the old and the frail? Did you know that Cuomo hands out tax dollars as corporate subsidies to companies that don't pay $15 an hour? Did you know that state and municipal employees are excluded from the state minimum wage law?

The Cuomo $15 initiative is important and challenging. But he will have to figure out how to make it work after the first day's headlines are forgotten. And that won't be easy.

There is a moral imperative here, not just logical consistency. If it is wrong for McDonald's to pay workers the current minimum wage, it is wrong for New York state to do the same thing.

There is a practical imperative that will affect New York's ability to deliver services. Why would a home health care worker stay in her job paying $8.75 an hour when she can make almost double that flipping burgers? The public workforce will figure this out fast.

There is a political imperative, too, within New York and nationally. Cuomo had a very bad 2014 with New York's progressives, voters, legislators and interest groups. It will not take long for the talented new Assembly speaker, Carl Heastie, to realize that this is an opportunity to lead the fight for good jobs, no matter what the governor does. And Senate Republicans will seize on any Cuomo inconsistency, when the legislative fight commences in January.

Cuomo has moved swiftly and surely from his initial reluctance to support a $15 minimum wage to national status as the first elected official seizing on the national politics of a living wage and demand-side economics. It will be a lot harder for him to make it work than it was for him to have a news conference with Joe Biden.

A lot of folks are rooting for him to get it right. He should start with his own employees.